A health charity has urged the Government to launch a campaign to improve public understanding of vaping as a new survey reveals that four in 10 smokers believe vaping is as risky or riskier than smoking.
A poll for Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) found that an estimated 1.8 million smokers (27%) have never tried vaping and 2.9 million have tried vaping but stopped.
Undertaken by YouGov, the survey of over 12,200 adults found that 39% in Great Britain now believe vaping is as risky or riskier when compared with smoking – up from a third last year.
The Government this year announced a national ‘swap to stop’ campaign to offer one million smokers a free vaping starter kit together with behavioural support to help them quit smoking.
ASH says that the success of this campaign is threatened by the growing number of people who believe vaping is riskier than smoking.
Hazel Cheeseman, deputy chief executive of ASH, said: ‘The Government has backed a vaping strategy as its path to reduce rates of smoking, but this approach will be undermined if smokers don’t try vapes due to safety fears or stop vaping too soon and revert to smoking.
‘The Government must act quickly to improve public understanding that vaping poses a fraction of the risk of smoking.’
Professor Ann McNeill, King’s College London, the author of a Government commissioned review on the harms from vaping, commented: ‘Anxiety over youth vaping is obscuring the fact that switching from smoking to vaping will be much better for an individual’s health.
‘It is wrong to say we have no idea what the future risks from vaping will be. On the contrary levels of exposure to cancer causing and other toxicants are drastically lower in people who vape compared with those who smoke, which indicates that any risks to health are likely to be a fraction of those posed by smoking.
‘We must not be complacent about youth vaping and further regulation is needed, but so too is work to ensure many more adults stop smoking and vaping is an effective means of doing that.’
